Archive for the 'KFKA radio in Greeley' Category

You can’t win if you’re Rep. Ken Buck and you go on Tea-Party radio, just after you’ve voted to retain Tea-Party anathema John Boehner as Speaker of the U.S. House.

You’ve already been called out for treason on Facebook, and you have to say that’s wrong. On the other hand, you have to show that you understand why liberty listeners hate Boehner so much.

Under tough questioning by guest-host Nancy Rumfelt on KFKA last week, here’s how Buck threaded the needle.

Buck (at 12:40): “I want to face people. And especially the people that thought they were being cute in putting ugly things on my Facebook. You know, if you want to say something nasty to me, say it to my face. Don’t put something on Facebook. What happened yesterday was just a disgrace. You know, go to Trey Gaudy’s town hall meeting and call him traitor. Say that he committed treason. It’s just ridiculous. And yes, we voted for John Boehner. We thought it was the best path forward, but it is not an act of treason. And it’s just silly to use those terms.”

But don’t even think Buck will slide toward the middle:

Buck (at 6:50 below): “Speaker and the leadership team know that they cannot count on me when they move to the middle, that I will be voting against leadership’s efforts in certain areas, especially is true when it comes to the fiscal issues, the appropriations bills and the regulatory issues. And I include Obamacare in that. But absolutely. The people in the 4th Congressional District can count on Ken Buck to be with the conservative votes when it comes to the bills that are coming up in the future.”

Senatorial candidate Cory Gardner has been hitting the radio airwaves recently with his thoughts on immigration, and I’ve discerned a pattern, nothing too complex, but a pattern nonetheless:

Start with point number one here: 1. Sound like you’re for immigration reform. 2. Attack others for immigration-reform failures. 3. Sound like you have an actual factual immigration-reform plan, when, in fact, you have nothing specific to offer. 4. Go back to point number 1.

Gardner: I believe we should move forward with an immigration policy that prioritizes border security, and that includes a viable guest-worker program that capitalizes on the benefits of legal immigration to this country.

[Pont three and four: He's sounding like he has a plan. But where is it? Judging from his utterances, you'd think he supports the bipartisan Senate bill, which he's just slammed Udall for supporting. What does Gardner support?

In another recent interview, on KFKA's Amy Oliver show, Gardner rattled off his immigration spin cycle in a slightly different order, but the points were there.

Gardner, sounding like he's for immigration reform: "First we have to have Senate, House, and president working together to solve these problems."

Gardner blaming others: "We have the Senate saying, 'Our way or the highway." This is the bill. They refuse to work with the House, saying this is the only thing we can have. We have certain members of the House, including Republicans, who are refusing to work with Democrats, and that’s unacceptable. And we have a president who just wants to blame people.

Gardner sounding like he has a plan: "And I think we have to have people willing to work together to work with our neighbors to make sure we put policies in place that don't end up with them sending family loved ones to have this horrible journey because the conditions in their country are so bad."

Gardner: I think there is need for reform [point one], but the bottom line is the President has to show a willingness to make sure that the law is enforced and to be able to work with Congress. And really, it’s unfortunate that the fact, this president put no effort into building relationships with Congress over the past four years on either side of the aisle. It’s really starting to hurt his policy efforts now.

So the pattern is pretty obvious, but the question is, will Gardner be challenged, even by talk-radio hosts, when he tries to roll it out?

In a blog post Friday, I tipped my hat to a Greeley talk-radio show for being the first media outlet to report that Cory Gardner’s new position on abortion, in the wake of his un-endorsement of the personhood amendment, aligns with dogmatic religious views against abortion, even in the case of rape and incest.

But KFKA hosts Tom Lucero and Devon Lentz let me down by not questioning Gardner when he told them he holds the same position on abortion as “many pro-lifers in Colorado, including Congressman Bob Schaffer.”

But Bob Schaffer never endorsed the personhood initiative at all, much less collected signatures for it. Personhood leaders would never have called Schaffer one of their “main supporters.”

You can bet Schaffer never sent a constituent a letter saying, “Throughout my life, I’ve been committed to protecting human life, beginning at conception.” Gardner wrote this just last month.

So, actually, Gardner’s abortion position is significantly to the right of Schaffer’s, which obviously carries serious political baggage for Gardner, as Lucero and Lentz should have pointed out.

On abortion policy and politics, Gardner is much more like Ken Buck. Afrwe being an enthusiastic supporter of the personhood amendment, Buck un-endorsed the measure in much the same way Gardner did, saying he still supported it “as a concept” but he hadn’t fully understand it. Gardner, you recall, said the personhood initiative was motivated by “good intentions.”

Buck’s flip did nothing to stop him from, arguably, losing the election due to his position on women’s issues. Schaffer would neither have been as vulnerable as Buck was nor as vulnerable as Gardner remains.

These are the issues that should be raised, if Gardner continues to downplay his personhood flip flop by comparing himself to Schaffer.

When Rep. Cory Gardner dumped his longstanding support of the Personhood amendment two weeks ago, reporters failed to tell us about Gardner’s new position on abortion.

It turns out, Gardner now holds the same abortion stance as Archbishop Charles Chaput, who left Denver for a Vatican post in Philadelphia in 2011.

That’s what Gardner told KFKA (Greeley) talk-show hosts Tom Lucero and Devon Lentz March 27. They get the intrepid-talk-show-host prize for being the first to ask Gardner the logical follow up to his March 21 bombshell about ditching personhood:

LUCERO: So, Cory, has your position on life changed, or just your position on – with regards to the Personhood initiative?

GARDNER: Yeah. I mean, if you look at my record, it still is a pro-life record. And many pro-lifers in Colorado, including Congressman Bob Schaffer, the Archbishop Chaput of the Catholic Diocese, hold the same position.

LENTZ: So, it’s really, it’s more along the lines, if I’m understanding correctly, on what contraception is available for women, not – not abortion — for being abortion– it’s just more having the choice of birth control itself.

GARDNER: Well, that’s one of the consequences that we looked at in terms of contraception, but this issue [personhood] is, I think, a settled issue in Colorado and something that pro-lifers – you know, like I respect peoples’ difference of opinion on this, and I think there are a lot of differences of opinions on this, but I happen to agree that, with the things that I have learned, that I did something that was the right position to take.

https://soundcloud.com/bigmedia-org/gardner-says-his-abortion

So what does this tell us about Gardner’s newly minted abortion views?

The Vatican, along with Catholic Bishops, like Chaput, support the personhood concept, with life beginning at conception. They oppose all abortion, even for rape and incest.

A decade ago, Chaput himself wrote, in describing church teachings, that Roe v. Wade is a “poorly reasoned mistake” and “abortion is wrong in all cases, even rape and incest.” (News Release, “CFJ: Many See the Anti-Religious Implications of Dem Questions on Pryor,” July 3, 2003″).

On his “AM Colorado” show last week, Lucero also asked Gardner for “a little more insight” into his decision to abandon personhood:

LUCERO: You got a little bit of heat this last week in an interview you had with The Denver Post. Give our listeners a little more insight into what you were trying to tell them over at The Denver Post.

GARDNER: Well, you know, if you look at my position as a pro-life member of Congress, if you look what we did four years ago during the 2009, 2010 run up to the election [inaudible] the number of initiatives on the ballot, I had stated then that I supported an initiative known as the Personhood initiative. But since that time, I have done a lot of work, done a lot of studying, and learned that that is actually something that many pro-lifers agree, could ban contraception and is a step back for the pro-life effort. And I believe the voters of Colorado have spoken –that they said ‘no’ to this on multiple occasions, and we ought to be working together on common goals that we can achieve, instead of fighting over a separate issue.

https://soundcloud.com/bigmedia-org/rep-cory-gardner-explains-why

Interestingly, in August, before Gardner flipped on personhood, former CO Republican Chair Dick Wadhams cited Chaput as a model for a GOP candidate–as someone who is both “pro-life” but anti-personhood amendment. Wadhams said at the time that a pro-life candidate who embraces the personhood amendment can’t win in a statewide election.

KFKA talk-radio host Amy Oliver urged Republicans last week to read a Facebook post by former State Senator Shawn Mitchell, in which Mitchell wrote that he’s “somewhere between distressed and appalled that GOP luminaries think it’s a good idea for [Rep. Amy Stephens] to bear the party’s standard into a campaign for federal office in 2014.”

Stephens is one of six GOP candidates vying to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Udall next year. Also running are Tea Party favorite and recycled Senate candidate Ken Buck, mustachioed state Senator Randy Baumgardner from northwestern Colorado’s District 8, state Senator from El Paso County Owen Hill, as well as Jamie McMillan and Tom Janich.

Oliver, who doubles as a staffer for the libertarian Independence Institute, was really excited about Mitchell’s Dec. 9 Facebook post, telling listeners that “the entry of Amy Stephens in the race, and some of the subsequent endorsements that she has received, have got conservatives saying privately what Shawn Mitchell put out publicly.”

Oliver dedicated two segments of Tuesday’s show to the Facebook post, pouring over Mitchell’s writing, like you might read a religious text, slowly and respectfully analyzing it in loving detail, re-reading portions of it, pausing, and building up to what she called one of Mitchell’s “most important lessons:”

Mitchell: “Pushing Amy Stephens to the nomination will guarantee bitter debate and resentment that demoralizes the base, escalates recrimination, and urging toward party fracture, and accelerates the GOP’s recent death wish to impersonate the Whigs.

And that speaks only of the primary. If the elders and donors can carry her across the line to the nomination, what exactly do you think the Media Democrat team will do to the former employee of Focus on the Family, the co-architect of the infamous end-of session civil-buster, that killed dozens of bills on the calendar, in order to block a vote on civil unions? Whatever the merits of that move, it will be blood in the water come October. And it will be just about the only thing that unpolitical, tv-watching Coloradans ever hear about Amy Stephens.”

Oliver accurately provided context, pointing out that Mitchell’s post, which has amassed 264 comments on Facebook, states that Stephens is not a “bad Republican,” but she agreed with Mitchell’s view:

Mitchell: “In sponsoring SB-200, the Obamacare exchange, Amy Stephens bet wrong in a big way on a defining, existential battle, perhaps the biggest of the decade, maybe in our lifetime. She sided with party appeasers and corporate accomodationists against a vital, surging grass roots movement for liberty and smaller government. Even at the time she made her bet, the picture was murky, and ambitious politicians could be forgiven for being uncertain. (Once upon a time, it took me days to sort out right from wrong when Referendum C’s assault on TABOR was put before the people.).”

“I highly recommend that Republicans read it,” Oliver told listeners, even after she’s already said Mitchell’s post is a “must read” and “a great read.”

Oliver should obviously have Stephens on the show to get her side of the story.

On KNUS radio last week, Rep. Cory Gardner was pressed on whether he’d try again to block an extension of the debt limit to stop Obamacare. His answer surprised me:

Gardner: “I don’t think threatening with the debt limit is a good idea. I think that has proven to not work.”

Afternoon KNUS host Steve Kelley, who was interviewing Gardner, seemed to think Gardner should go down the debt-ceiling-government-shutdown road again, and not blink this time. So I thought Kelley would remind Gardner how fierce an advocate he’d been for using the debt ceiling in the past.

Kelley may not be a regular listener of KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show, but I am, and I remember when Oliver asked him (on Jan. 8):

Oliver: I want to ask you Congressman, are you willing to vote no against a raise in the Debt Ceiling if it doesn’t include significant spending cuts?

Gardner: Well, “Absolutely,” is the answer to that.

Gardner made similar comments to Kelley himself in January, saying, “We are not going to imperil the future generations of the country. It is immoral. It is wrong.” And on conservative KFTM, Gardner said that blocking the extension of the debt ceiling was an “opportunity to reduce the size and scope of government, and how we can require opportunities to look for savings, look for cuts, and what we’re going to do to grow the economy through common sense tax reform. I think there’s great opportunities for us to get back on track.” (Listen here.)

So If I were Kelley, I’d wonder why Gardner’s moral outrage about the debt ceiling was so easily undermined by a tactical loss.

Conservative talk-radio hosts agreed to disagree with State Sen. Greg Brohpy last week on his support of a new Colorado law offering undocumented students, who were brought to our country illegally, in-state tuition.

Asked to explain the evolution of his thinking on the topic (from for it to against it), Brophy said in part:

There is a real problem that some kids in the state of Colorado are locked into permanent impoverishment when there is a better path for them. So, you know the kids down here in Kersey, for instance, a kid named Everado who was the valedictorian of his class and a great football player and baseball player, had a scholarship to go to college but couldn’t get in-state tuition. He is now milking cows instead of going to college.

Nicely put, but why won’t this kid be able to stop milking cows and go to college, now that the ASSET law has been passed? KFKA co-hosts Devon Lentz and Tom Lucero didn’t ask. Maybe Brophy himself can help this kid, and differentiate himself further from fellow gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo?

But the AM Radio Colorado Show hosts were apparently too upset about Brophy’s support for ASSET to sympathize with Everado. Instead, they pushed on, asking Brophy where he stands on the immigration bill passed by the U.S. Senate but being held up by the Republican-controlled House.

BROPHY: I would oppose that bill. I would say, you know, first and foremost, secure the borders. Make sure that we stop, as much as possible, the inflow of people coming into the country illegally. And then second, and almost immediately, put in place a two-track visa system where people that want to come here to become Americans have a path to do that, that they can actually see, that takes away the incentive to cheat. And another path – a visa path – that let’s people come to this country to work. And again, it’s a relatively easy path to see, to take away the incentive of coming here illegally. I look at this like a problem to solve, a little bit like a police chief in a small town. If you’re having a lot of trouble with kids late at night, you enforce the curfew. The kids that are inclined to not cause problems, will be at home. The ones that are going to be problematic, there won’t be nearly as many of them for you to watch. So, if you have a visa system that actually works, that allows people a pretty clear path to get here, to become an American or to get here to work, then you don’t have to watch so many people trying to sneak in to the country illegally. That solves that problem, and I would be pushing for that as governor. I think that’s a—you know, that’s an American way of doing things. We want people to come here.

Lentz and Lucero should have someone on the show to defend the immigration bill, since Brohpy won’t do so.

On a Sept. 5 show, KFKA talk-radio host Tom Lucero told Colorado House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso that government shouldn’t be an obstacle to small business.

Agreed. But talk-radio hosts shouldn’t be an obstacle to small business either. Or to educating our children.

But Lucero established himself as such an obstruction by failing to correct DelGrosso when the new Colorado House Minority leader claimed that Amendment 66, which would raise income tax to support education, would be a burdensome tax on small businesses:

DelGrosso: Well, the reality is, I think it’s mid- to upper eighty percent of all businesses in Colorado are small businesses. And close to eighty percent of those small businesses are set up either as a sole proprietorship, an LLC, or an S Corp., which means that their taxes that their business makes flows through onto their personal income tax. So, you will see about 80% of businesses in Colorado see a tax increase as a result of this. [Listen here.]

It’s true that some business owners (like me) choose to take profit from their businesses (e.g., in the form of dividends) and account for it on their personal income tax filings. But that’s because it’s their income! So they pay personal income tax on it, just like they would income from any other source or employment.

If you make income from a business, whether you own the business or not, you pay income tax. The individual would be taxed, not the business, under Amendment 66, and no one will be taxed twice.

With Lucero apparently agape at the fictitious thought that small businesses could be facing a new tax, DelGrosso went on to say:

DelGrosso: When the taxes go up, not only does that get passed along to the consumer, another way that that affects folks is that affects pay raises for the business. So maybe, because the taxes went up, I’m not going to be able to give pay raises this year. I’m not going to be able to hire somebody, or I’m going to have to let somebody go, or I can’t expand.

It’s hard to imagine a small business owner who would look over his personal budget, including the income from his LLC or S Corp, and decide not to invest more in his business due to the tax increase under Amendment 66.

ColoradoCommitsToKids calculates that an individual making the gross median income of $57,000, will pay an additional $211 in tax. A small businessperson who claims gross income on his individual income tax return of $150,000 will pay an additional $24 per week. Double that and it’s still not enough for the greediest capitalist to do much with.

But, collectively, it’s enough to give our kids the opportunity they deserve to succeed on Colorado.

That’s why media figures like Lucero, whose background as a former CU Regent should sensitize him to the educational needs of our kids, should counter DelGrosso’s misinformation with facts. Or have an educator on the show who can.

Carno: It’s just been this series of distractions, with the Planned Parenthood mail pieces being the latest distraction. This isn’t about abortion. Supreme Court Justices are not decided in Denver. There’s nothing that’s going to happen here that’s going to harm women. And as a woman…stop trying to manipulate women by saying in 2013 all of these terrible things are going to happen, and they are just not going to.

As I’ve discussed a couple times recently, abortion issues are not a distraction in state politics. Ask a woman just across the CO border in Utah (and 11 other states), if she thinks it’s a pesky distraction to be required, before she can obtain an abortion, to get counseling on the ability of a fetus to feel pain. Read about distractive state abortion laws here and proposed laws in Colorado here.

Carno herself helps run the Colorado Women’s Alliance, whose mission includes supporting “research, education and advocacy in areas of concern to women voters.” Since when is reproductive health, including abortion, not a concern to women?

Still, Carno feels so strongly about eliminating the abortion distraction from the CO Springs recall election that she and KVOR talk-show host Jeff Crank are pressuring CO Springs TV stations to stop running ads stating, accurately, that Republican recall candidate Bernie Herpin supports the personhood “plan” to codify life as beginning at conception and thus outlawing all abortion and common forms of birth control.

One TV station manager has declined to withdraw the ads, and the others aren’t responding, suggesting they agree that the ads are factual.

But this hasn’t stopped lawyers associated with Carno from shooting off an Aug. 27 letter, obtained by your humble blogger today, threatening to sue in an apparent attempt to scare broadcasters and Herpin opponents into stopping a radio ad:

Carno-associated lawyer: “I can quickly draft an injunction complaint based on the false ads…. I can have a lawsuit drafted and served by the close of business today. Your measure of damages is probably on the order of several times the cost to run the ads in order to educate the viewers on the truth.”

Carno implied that KFKA’s Oliver agrees with her that abortion issues are a distraction in the recall election. Regardless, Oliver owes it to women–and the rest of us–to air out why it’s not a legitimate topic to discuss.